Botones

lunes, 27 de agosto de 2012

Blythe Differences between original Blythe, fake and prototypes (Part 1)

As I see that many people have doubts about the differences between the original Blythe, prototypes and fakes, this post will be aimed to clarify concepts and appreciate the main differences between them.

"Blythe dolls were inspired by the designs developed by Margaret Keane, similarly to many other American dolls of the 60's and 70's. Its main feature were his eyes, which were able to be closed as desired and could change their color as well thanks to a rope with a handle (popularly known as 'pullstring') located on the back of the head, hidden by the hair. Blythe dolls were only sold in the U.S. (although produced in Hong Kong) for one year, 1972, because they were not very popular (American girls at that time were scared by his oversized head) and that made them disappear from the stores quickly.

Thirty years after its initial release, the Blythe regained popularity unexpectedly. In 1997, producer Gina Garan was given a 1972 Kenner Blythe original as a gift from a friend and began using it as a model to improve her skills as a photographer.

In 2000, Gina published her first book of Blythe photography at Chronicle Books, This is Blythe. Later in the same year, the American company Hasbro (Kenner's successor) gave Blythe rights to the japanese Takara. The first 'Neo Blythe' (developed by Takara) was used in a television campaign for Parco stores with instant and resounding success. This allowed the return of Blythes in the U.S. and then to the rest of the world, but this time turned into a product for adults 'collectors'.

Information taken from Wikipedia

Time has wanted to introduce into the market products similar to Blythe, but of dubious origin and this is when problems begin.

In addition to other products trying to imitate the design of the Blythe doll, I'll talk probably about in the future, they appeared in the market identical design models, which at first seemed a mixture of parts of different models previously released, or unreleased until that moment. These dolls would be called prototypes or Blythe Factory.

Blythe Factory / Prototypes: The history of the prototypes and Factory Blythe, has some points in common. The factory Blythe consist of pieces of different dolls and have not been recognized by Takara as original dolls, but they have not denied they are so, therefore, there are various theories about its origin.

I would like to quickly summarize its little story in a few lines: Takara initially sent some prototypes of dolls they were making to certain collectors, these dolls were not a final design, but reached high prices in the secondary market, since they were unreleased sample dolls with identical features to commercial models. Through some chinese vendors, large quantities of dolls started to be sold over time, made of different parts, which they called Factory Blythe.These dolls were made of pieces from about to be edited models, such as Zukin Ahcahcum Blythe and doll parts also released in the past, they had little flaws in their makeup, as e.g. the limited edition Blythe Doronjo.

The Factory Blythe has continued to be sold since then and have found its greatest exponent in the Taobao market. The large number of dolls offered makes us suspect if they are really made from leftovers or prototypes from the factory. Takara being involved or not in this matter, anyway, prototypes have the same mold than official Takara ones, with some small flaws as chips on the doll's makeup, assembly defects in the torso, a bad hair cut or entangled hair.

Shortly after the appearance of the prototypes and factory on the market, it began to sound the alarm of forgery and Blythe Fake appeared.

Blythe fake: when the first fake blythe appeared, terror arose because some vendors intentionally or unintentionally, were selling them pretenting to be original Blythe. The first models that began to be spotted as fakes were Simply Guava Mango and Simply The Urban Cowgirl and the Last Kiss. These three models were often sold with the original pictures of the brand and it was not until the reception of the doll, when buyers were aware of the deception. Differences in packaging were minimal and even an experienced collector might go unnoticed because of the low-resolution of the pictures used by the sellers.

Although at first sight differences doesn't show, Blythe Fake have not a mold which is an exact copy of the one used by Takara, plus, when removing them we can see that the material quality is lower than a prototype one and of course the original Blythe. That's a big advantage for us when we are differentiating them.

At this point, we find ourselves in the dilemma, how to differentiate them?, A problem I'll discuss in the next post.